Self Esteem

Pocket Chainsaw - Ready for cuttin'

Pocket Chainsaw - Ready for cuttin'

Pocket Chainsaw - Ready for cuttin'

There are many things that need to be cut down to size, and one doesn't always have one's gas or battery-powered chainsaw to tear through the task. That's why this pocket chainsaw--a chainsaw-in-a-can--is so wonderful. Just wrap it around what needs to be cut, grasp the hooks or attach the included handles, and pull back and forth. 124 bi-directional teeth will chew into whatever you're trimming and eat it for breakfast. It'll cut a 3 inch diameter (tree) limb in 10 seconds. Dang.

Economy: Debt collection is the new growth industry - latimes.com

Economy: Debt collection is the new growth industry - latimes.com:

press release:

WELCOME RELIEF TO THE NATION'S 14 MILLION UNEMPLOYED:

PROMINENT DEBT COLLECTION AGENCY, CFS II, ANNOUNCES PLANS TO EXPAND NATIONWIDE

WILL ADD 10,000 NEW JOBS IN THE NEXT THREE YEARS

Well, maybe printing the headline is enough. CFS II, which positions itself as a humane alternative to the hectoring approach taken by the typical bill collector, evidently misses the irony of touting how good the downturn has been for the debt-collection business. The Tulsa, Okla.-based firm plans to launch call centers -- i.e., phone banks its employees will use to dun people for money -- in five states. Each center will employ 500 people initially, growing to 2,000 by the third year of operation, the company pledged.

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The Old Kind of Spam

Euphemism

Take The Loss | The Big Picture

Take The Loss | The Big Picture: "Its something that every rookie trader must learn to do — and all of the TBTF banks refuse to do. Even sovereign nations seem unwilling to accept this simple fact of financial life.

There will be losses. How you handle them determines your fortune, your fate and your future.

Seeing how people handle losses is revealing of their character and integrity. Hiding losses is what rogue traders do. Its also what rogue banks do, and apparently, rogue nations."

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words

Why More Is Less

Summary: The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by B. Schwartz

1. Giving people too many choices tends to lessen their satisfaction.

2. “Maximizers” are people who will exhaustively search the options, seeking all information, to make the best choice. This generally consumes a lot of time, and often leads to doubts, perhaps where no one clear winner emerged.

3. “Satisficers” are those who settle for a choice that is “good enough." They are generally happier with their choice, and spend less time choosing, leaving them free to enjoy other things."

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George Carlin on Proud Parents

Why Zero Interest Rates Don't Help Stimulate the Economy

Nomura Research Institute's Richard Koo says that what the world is experiencing right now, a "balance sheet recession," is different from traditional recessions. However, Japan recently experienced a similar type of recession, and Koo says we can learn a lot from that country's experiences. Interviewed by Daniel Erasmus at King's College, April 2010.

Another bride, another groom...

Robert Shiller On Why Operation Twist Won't Help The Housing Market

Robert Shiller On Why Operation Twist Won't Help The Housing Market: "“Homeowners are relatively insensitive to mortgage rates when they are lacking confidence,” he said. “The dramatic thing that is happening now is that their job isn’t secure, if they even have one.”"

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what are you buying?

"ALL constraints on the deficit are real not monetary, at least for the US. It CAN make any interest payment it chooses to, always. There is no way shape or form it does NOT have the money to pay. Okay

"Once you accept that you simply have to ask what is your spending trying to achieve, what are you buying? Now if you are buying unused labor to increase productivity I dont think anyone would argue that THAT is a bad thing. Are you buying unused labor at too high a price that makes people leave the private sector? Thats a bad thing so a balance needs to be reached. 

"What the "market" thinks of your spending should be irrelevant. The govt is not losing money in the markets nor do they need funds FROM the markets, unless they ignorantly tie themselves to them with stupid rules.

"You are correct that the govts aim should be on providing for its citizens, ALL its citizens, and therefore employment should be higher on the list of worries than bond markets or currency traders"

Read more: http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2010/03/going-off-on-rogoff-there-is-no-hard-debt-constraint-for-fiat-currency.html#ixzz1D25GQr4f

Freud made no substantial intellectual discoveries. He was the creator of a complex pseudo-science which should be recognized as one of the great follies of Western civilization. In creating his particular pseudo-science, Freud developed an autocratic, anti-empirical intellectual style which has contributed immeasurably to the intellectual ills of our own era.

According to Richard Webster, author of Why Freud Was Wrong (1995)

Alas, if they only knew...

As Student Loans Hit All Time Record, One High School Valedictorian "Gets It"


Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/18/2011 13:45 -0400

This it NOT what you would expect from a traditional valedictorian speech. Hopefully people, especially young people, are starting to wake up to just how corrupt and broken at its core, the US educational system is. Alas, tangentially, as the following data from Stone McCarthy indicates, there is little danger that the revelations captured in this video are anywhere near widespread, courtesy of record after record rise in the next big bubble: student loan debt, which is nothing but even more voluntary indentured servitude in hopes that the latest piece of paper certifying one is "smart" will make one's resume more attractive to potential employers. Alas, if they only knew...

Five Rules for Dealing with Real Estate Agents

- based on post from -
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

Rule Number One

Real estate agents will always say "Now is a Great Time to Buy" no matter what the trend of prices, mortgage rates, or inventory.


Rule Number Two

Unless you specifically have a buyers' agent negotiating on your behalf, the agent represents the seller.


Rule Number Three

The agent has only two missions:
To get you to buy something
To get you to pay as much as possible so the agent make the largest commission possible


Rule Number Four

The smarmy smile, the too cheerful demeanor, remember the agent is not your friend.  Be skeptical about anything positive your agent says.


Rule Number Five

It's equally important to take cues from what the agent does not say. Don't expect the agent to tell you about crack house  next door or that the street floods every April. At most, agents will only disclose what the law says they must.

Easy Way to Delete Internet Browser Caches, Cookies, or History

From Gizmo

http://www.techsupportalert.com/
v.laurie


If you have ever been faced with wanting to delete your browser cache, cookies, or history, you know that the path to the browser dialog where this can be done involves a number of steps. However, there is a simple keyboard combination that will get you there faster. (Hold down all three keys.) It is:

Ctrl+Shift+Del

This shortcut works for Internet Explorer 8 and 9, Google Chrome, and Firefox 3.6 and up. The graphics below show the dialog that opens in each of the three types of browser when the shortcut is used.

Irresponsible Son Gets 101-Year-Old Mother Foreclosed On - Housing Doom

Irresponsible Son Gets 101-Year-Old Mother Foreclosed On - Housing Doom: "DETROIT – A 101-year-old woman was evicted from the southwest Detroit home where she lived for nearly six decades after her 65-year-old son failed to pay the mortgage.
Texana Hollis was evicted Monday and her belongings were placed outside the home. Her son, Warren Hollis, said he didn’t pay the bill for several years and disregarded eviction notices.
“I kept it from her because I didn’t want to worry her,” Warren Hollis told WXYZ-TV for a report that aired Monday night. “I was just so sure it wasn’t going to happen.”"

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Why Edward Jones’ Quarterly Results Are a Bad Sign for Investors - CBS MoneyWatch.com

Why Edward Jones’ Quarterly Results Are a Bad Sign for Investors - CBS MoneyWatch.com: "It reminds me of a dark joke I used to hear during my days working for a brokerage house. A broker told his client that he should buy stock in IBM. Unfortunately for the client, the stock fell after he bought it, and the advisor told the client to sell the shares. Afterward, the broker relayed the story to his branch manager. The manager said, “So the brokerage house made money from the transactions, you made money from the transactions, and the client lost money?” And they both chuckled and said “Well, two out of three ain’t bad.”"

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Dutch Finance Ministry Says Greek Default Is Unavoidable, Immediately Retracts | ZeroHedge

Reuters:


"Dutch financial daily Het Financieele Dagblad reported earlier on Tuesday that Bert Bruggink, chief financial officer at leading Dutch lender Rabobank, warned that Greece's bankruptcy was inevitable.


"The question whether Greece goes bankrupt is behind us now. The only question is when it will happen," Bruggink was quoted as saying.


Within a few weeks, the Dutch finance ministry will publish results from "shock tests" and what the shocks mean for government finances, whether recapitalisation of banks is needed, and what other measures might be necessary, De Jager said"

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Median Male Worker Makes Less Now -adjusted for inflation- Than 43 Years Ago

 "While the fact that a record number of Americans are living in poverty should not surprise anyone at this point, what should surprise many is that according to Table P-5 of the Census report of (Lack of) Income, the median male is now worse on a gross, inflation adjusted basis, than he was in... 1968! While back then, the median income of male workers was $32,844, it has since risen declined to $32,137 as of 2010. And there is your lesson in inflation 101 (which we assume is driven by the CPI, which likely means that the actual inflation adjusted income decline is far worse than what is even reported)."

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Peter
Medawar, who said (in "Pluto's Republic", 1982):

"There is some truth in psychoanalysis, as there is in
mesmerism and phrenology, but considered in its entirety,
psychoanalysis won't do. It is an end-product, like a dinosaur or
a Zeppelin; no better theory can ever be constructed on its
ruins, which will remain as one of the saddest and strangest of
all landmarks in the history of 20th century thought."

I Love The Smell Of Denial In The Morning... | ZeroHedge

I Love The Smell Of Denial In The Morning... | ZeroHedge: "The dollar is once again the best looking horse in the glue factory..."

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Average yield on Dogs of the Dow 4.32%

NYSE / NASDAQ

The Dow stocks ranked by yield on 9/9/11


T AT&T                                       6.25%
VZ Verizon                                   5.53%
MRK Merck                                4.77%
PFE Pfizer                                    4.38%
INTC Intel                                   4.26%
GE General Electric                      3.98%
DD DuPont                                  3.62%
JNJ Johnson &Johnson                 3.58%
TRV The Travelers Cos.               3.41%
PG Procter & Gamble                   3.4%

Average yield on Dogs of the Dow   4.32% 

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Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme?

Paul Krugman (writing in 1996):

Social Security is structured from the point of view of the recipients as if it were an ordinary retirement plan: what you get out depends on what you put in. So it does not look like a redistributionist scheme. In practice it has turned out to be strongly redistributionist, but only because of its Ponzi game aspect, in which each generation takes more out than it put in. Well, the Ponzi game will soon be over, thanks to changing demographics, so that the typical recipient henceforth will get only about as much as he or she put in (and today’s young may well get less than they put in). (ital added, AT)

Real Estate Agents:)

The housing crash trapped a generation in their starter homes - Irvine Real Estate & Irvine Homes - Irvine Housing Blog:

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A Layman’s Guide to the President’s Jobs Speech: Caroline Baum - Bloomberg

A Layman’s Guide to the President’s Jobs Speech: Caroline Baum - Bloomberg: " The ghost of George W. Bush
We know it’s Bush’s fault: the housing bubble, the bust, the financial crisis, the recession, the anemic recovery, the trillion-dollar annual deficits, everything. Almost three years into his first term, Obama needs to move on. Unless he accepts responsibility for something, anything, you’ll know that this is just another campaign speech."

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Driving Tank Into Home, Killing Puppy

Steven Seagal, Arizona Sherriff Joe Arpaio Sued For Driving Tank Into Home, Killing Puppy:


In March, Arpaio and officers decked out in full riot gear conducted a raid on the home of Jesus Sanchez Llovera to break up a suspected cock fighting farm, bringing along Seagal, who drove onto the scene in a tank. According to Llovera, the police carried out an "unfounded" raid that significantly damaged his home, and that they shot and killed his 11-month old puppy and around 100 roosters.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/steven-seagal-arizona-sherriff-sued-for-driving-tank-into-home-killing-puppy-2011-9#ixzz1XMgksePA

warm air

2012 Mercedes-Benz SLK350 Full Test: "The seats blow warm air on our neck — something we can't even get our wife to do anymore."

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Freud as Myth

Karl Popper, whose
assessment was:

"[Freud's theory] although posing as science, had in fact more in
common with primitive myth than with science... it resembled
astrology rather than astronomy"; (Popper (1965). Conjectures
and Refutations (2nd ed.))"

What is Google Correlate?

Google Correlate is an experimental new tool on Google Labs which enables you to find queries with a similar pattern to a target data series. The target can either be a real-world trend that you provide (e.g., a data set of event counts over time) or a query that you enter.

Google Correlate is like Google Trends in reverse. With Google Trends, you type in a query and get back a data series of activity (over time or in each US state). With Google Correlate, you enter a data series (the target) and get back a list of queries whose data series follows a similar pattern.

http://www.google.com/trends/correlate

Climate Skeptic

http://www.climate-skeptic.com/

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and other things being equal, the more carbon dioxide in the air, the warmer the planet. Every bit of carbon dioxide that we emit warms the planet. But the issue is not whether carbon dioxide warms the planet, but how much.

Most scientists, on both sides, also agree on how much a given increase in the level of carbon dioxide raises the planet’s temperature, if just the extra carbon dioxide is considered. These calculations come from laboratory experiments; the basic physics have been well known for a century.

The disagreement comes about what happens next.

The planet reacts to that extra carbon dioxide, which changes everything. Most critically, the extra warmth causes more water to evaporate from the oceans. But does the water hang around and increase the height of moist air in the atmosphere, or does it simply create more clouds and rain? Back in 1980, when the carbon dioxide theory started, no one knew. The alarmists guessed that it would increase the height of moist air around the planet, which would warm the planet even further, because the moist air is also a greenhouse gas.

This is the core idea of every official climate model: For each bit of warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of warming due to the extra moist air.

.....

That’s the core of the issue. All the disagreements and misunderstandings spring from this. The alarmist case is based on this guess about moisture in the atmosphere, and there is simply no evidence for the amplification that is at the core of their alarmism.

Ghandi by Orwell

Close friendships, Gandhi says, are dangerous, because "friends react on
one another" and through loyalty to a friend one can be led into
wrong-doing. This is unquestionably true. Moreover, if one is to love
God, or to love humanity as a whole, one cannot give one's preference to
any individual person. This again is true, and it marks the point at
which the humanistic and the religious attitude cease to be reconcilable.
To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving
some people more than others. The autobiography leaves it uncertain
whether Gandhi behaved in an inconsiderate way to his wife and children,
but at any rate it makes clear that on three occasions he was willing to
let his wife or a child die rather than administer the animal food
prescribed by the doctor.

THE ABSURDITY OF THE DRIVING RANGE AND WHY (SOME) INVESTORS SHOULD CHEER

By David Schawel,
In my younger days .., practicing at the driving range was a habit. As I reflect ...the whole concept of a driving range completely ridiculous. People slaving away on 3×3 astro turf mats. Fancy warmup swings. New drivers with heads the size of a grapefruit. Can you imagine a primitive people group watching this take place?


So why do people go to range? They don’t go because they enjoy it, I promise. By the fifth or sixth swing, the forty-something man is frustrated and bewildered that his ball is still slicing. His expensive equipment and initial enthusiasm have failed him. With the exception of the few who actually take lessons and practice specific habits, the rest of the poor “hacks” continue to hit away, ball after ball. They try various “tips” they picked up in Golf Digest such as “keep your head down” or “slow down your backswing”.

The truth is that these folks are hopeless. Much to the chagrin of efficient market proponents, these same characteristics are manifested in the average investor. Like the golfer who aimlessly hacks at bucket of balls, so is the plight of the average investor.....


I believe that having discipline to follow your rules is essential. ... Why? Because speculators without a plan are like a general without a strategy, ... Speculators without a single clear plan can only act and react, act and react, to the slings and arrows of stock market misfortune, until they are finally defeated. - Jesse Livermore

.... A plan on when to sell or not if a position goes up/down 20%? ... Having a solid game plan is by no means a cure all, however it is no doubt a fundamental of successful investing.